Prerequisites for Sleep

by Jennifer L. Stone

  “Sara hates me,” Christina says to Robert while undressing for bed.

  “It’s just a phase.” He slides his hands down her hips. His wedding ring feels cold and goosebumps rise on her skin.

  “Lock the door,” she says.

  Christina spent her sixteenth birthday doing housecleaning during one of her mother’s semiannual bucket brigades. Every nook and cranny, closet and shelf had to be scrubbed. How dare her mother steal her milestone, one of the most important days of her young life, for the sake of fall housecleaning? “After all,” she had wanted to yell so loud that the echo reverberating from across the lake would emphasize her point, “fall lasts three months.”

  Several months later, her best friend Suzanne celebrated her sixteenth with a sleepover, a roomful of girls who tittered at thoughts of school dances, makeup, boys, and sex. Christina didn’t titter. She lay on an inflatable mattress with cramps that she blamed on overindulgence in homemade chocolate sundaes. The following morning she had her first period. “Better late than never,” her mother said, handing her a box of pads that had been stashed in the linen closet for five years.

  Sitting at her computer working in Photoshop, Christina guides and clicks the mouse, creating vector points and Bezier curves around the contours of a bottle, some kind of tube-feeding solution the colour of milky tea. Flip open the lid, attach the pump and — voilà — dinner. She has adopted an attitude of crude humour towards these products. It is either that or spend too much time thinking about what it must be like to be old or sick, with nothing but ugly bottles to look forward to. Jean Pierre, their overweight chocolate Lab, has positioned himself under her desk and is resting his head on his front paws, just inches from her feet. Every few minutes he releases a sound, either a sigh or a snort, to remind her that she has yet to take him for a walk.

  In the corner of her office is a drafting table stacked with papers. A T-square and angles lean against the wall next to boxes of dockets and proofs. She stopped using them about the same time that she stopped wearing leotards and Doc Martens. Sometimes that doesn’t feel like so long ago. Sometimes it feels like an eternity. Christina had taken to the computer easily. Several friends from art college had rebelled against the new technology that stormed their industry in the late eighties. In the end, many were jobless or had to hire someone else to execute their work. She, at least, maintained a client base — maybe not the most exciting clients, but paying clients nonetheless.

  “Enough of this,” she mutters after cropping several images. She rolls the chair back and stands up, startling Jean Pierre, who has fallen into doggy dreams. He yelps, as if she’d just run over his paws with the casters. “Come on, we may as well go for that walk.”

  She stops to check the cupboard on the way to the back door. There are a couple of stray bugs wandering between the new plastic containers for flour and brown sugar. She squishes them with her thumb before washing their crusty bodies down the drain.

  When she returns, there is a message on her answering machine: “Christina, Jack Richardson. Call me.” Talk about short and sweet. She presses the speed dial.

  “Jack, it’s Christina.”

  “I need you to send the illustration files for our instruction books to Simon Kent at Kent Graves.”

  “An agency. I thought you were happy with my work.”

  “Don’t take it personal, Christina. Simon is the Chair of the Board of Trade Marketing Committee. We have the same tee-off time at the club.”

  “Are you telling me I should take up golf?” Christina has never felt so diminished in her life.

  Dinner is safe: pork chops, mashed potatoes, and frozen peas.

  “Good potatoes,” says Graham.

  “Yeah, Mom, good potatoes,” Jeremy says, mimicking his brother, except that he just stuffed a forkful into his mouth and they are beginning to coagulate.

  “Jeremy, you’re so gross. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full?” Sara’s voice has that self-appointed-expert tone, as if she now considers herself the authority on all things revolting. “Dad, there’s some papers in the living room that I need you to sign.”

  “Don’t you think I should read them first?”

  “Sure, if you want. Melissa asked me to sleep over. Can I?”

  “What do you think, Christina? Can she?”

  Christina knows that he wants to roll his eyes, but Sara is watching. Instead, he shoves a forkful of peas into his mouth, then bends over to retrieve two that fall on the floor.

  When Robert leaves to drive Sara to Melissa’s, Christina asks him to detour to the liquor store for a six-pack and a large bottle of red wine. “Make it a screw top,” she says. The two boys park themselves in front of the PlayStation in the family room. Grunts and the sounds of imaginary weapons drift up the stairs and attest to their activities. On the coffee table Christina sees Sara’s papers, two tests (requiring signatures), and a form for Take Your Kid to Work Day, already completed with Robert’s job information.

  “Ahhhh, wine,” she says, reaching for the bottle as soon as Robert returns. “I’ll pour?”

  The walls of her doctor’s office are the colour of sweat-stained undershirts. They make Christina want to puke. She is there for the results of her tests. Last week she told Mildred that she wasn’t feeling quite right. That something was wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Well,” says Mildred, “we’ve ruled out premeno-pause.”

  “Considering I was a late bloomer, that’s nice to know.”

  “Your tests indicate that you’re pregnant.”

  “Oh,” says Christina, cupping her hand over her mouth as the room begins to spin, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “I can’t believe that you could make this kind of stupid mistake,” Sara shrieks when Christina and Robert announce the news. “This is so disgusting. You two are old.” She lectures them as if she is the parent, tossing in words like responsible, adult and birth control. This time Christina wants to roll her eyes but pours herself a glass of milk instead. From behind the frosted glass rim, she watches Robert hold a straight face. Later, they will lock the bedroom door, crawl under the duvet, and giggle like chastised teens.

  In her fifth month, Christina pours chocolate sauce over a dish of brownie delight ice cream, then sprinkles it with pecans and drops on a maraschino cherry. She’s in the mood to celebrate. Yesterday, she acquired a new client, sent to her by Jack Richardson. Guilt, she figures. The infestation of her kitchen is over, and her second trimester is progressing nicely. Everyone is excited at the prospect of a new brother. Everyone except Sara, that is. She has yet to come around. These days, Christina worries a bit less about her daughter. It has something to do with the subtle differences in her appearance — skirts not as tight, makeup not as thick. Melissa’s mother just called to say that the string bean was history, definitely reason to celebrate. Still, there is the guilt over the fact that her unexpected pregnancy bothers Sara so much. She scoops a large spoonful of ice cream, making sure to include the cherry and copious amounts of sauce and pecans, then proceeds to seduce her taste buds by moving the spoon in and out of her mouth, savouring the flavour bit by bit. By the time she has finished her dessert, she realizes that all the chocolate sauce in the world won’t alleviate this guilt; and she stares out the window wondering if she will ever have a relationship with her daughter again.

  A Breath Before the Collision

  Occasionally, between the end of the grey drizzle and the start of blackfly season, there is one of those rare April days that brings everyone, long weary of being inside, out of their homes. Some people emerge in shorts because the weather gives the illusion of late May or even June, and they want to rush the season forward. Front doors are left open and windows are raised, enabling the outside to also journey in. It is as though each house has taken the sleeves of its w
inter coat and pulled them back through the armholes to expose the lining. Such a day doesn’t happen every year, only when there is a slight pause between the grey and the black, like a breath before the collision.

  Megan, looking older than her forty-seven years, is not the first person out this Saturday morning, although she is early. Strands of hair, both brown and grey, flip and curl out from under the ball cap she wears. She is tall and gaunt, almost witch-like in appearance. That’s how many of the local children see her. Below her eyes sit shadows of blue-black, like someone who is ill or deprived of sleep. The knee is torn in her denim overalls; her shirt is faded and stained.

  The people across the road are also out and stop raking their lawn in order to chat with the people who live in the house to their left. Megan doesn’t bother getting to know the neighbours any more. There was a time when she knew them all, but that was years ago. Everyone from those days has moved on. The neighbourhood has always been considered affordable, good starter homes for couples with young families, or first-time investments for up-and-comers.

  She and John had been so happy to find the L-shaped bungalow with water frontage that fell within their price range. During the two-month closing period, they drove by on several occasions, hardly able to contain their excitement. Then came moving day, their apartment belongings packed up and placed into the various rooms of their new home, which still looked empty after their meagre furnishings arrived. “Room to expand,” John had said, and she agreed.

  Megan especially remembers the first person she and John had met when they arrived on the picturesque crescent. It was Evelyn Montgomery, appearing instantly upon the departure of the moving van, a bucket and sponge in one hand and a plate of sandwiches in the other, as if she had been watching from the side window of her own house and waiting for that very moment, which she admitted some time later that she had been. It was her way to get involved and help out. A couple of years later, it was Evelyn who showed Megan how to express the milk from her engorged breasts so Jamie could latch on when they came home from the hospital. She was a nurse, her husband Rob a contractor. Builders and fixers, Megan called them.

  Together, Evelyn and Megan had organized charity drives and community events and garden tours and a book club, which started a small controversy because their first novel, The Wars, hit a nerve with Celeste Rogers, who stated that she could not read past that part, the one with Taffler and the Swede. “That’s not the issue,” Evelyn had said. “The story is about finding ways to cope with a horrific event while feeling totally isolated. That part just helps to make the point.” But Celeste couldn’t agree.

  Megan tried to turn the conversation around by saying, “Look at it from a different perspective. It’s about being at the mercy of strangers. Robert is always at the mercy of people he doesn’t feel close to. His own mother is the biggest stranger in his life, the worst offender. It was she who drove him to enlist. You’re aware of that from early on.” Then she chuckled. “It’s always the mother’s fault. Did you ever notice that?”

  “Yes,” replied Evelyn, laughing, “the mother or the butler, depending on circumstances.” After that, it must have been the butler was their standing private joke, sending them spiralling into uncontrollable laughter while John and Rob looked on perplexed.

  That was forever ago. Nowadays, Megan prefers to converse with Findley, a Heinz-57 mutt with one brown eye and one blue, who speaks very little in return, just the way Megan likes it. He follows her to the garage, where she picks up an expanding bucket and her gardening gloves. The garage has never held a car but assumes the role of shed and attic combined. In the corner closest to the door are tools and pots with dead houseplants. Off to one side sits a baby’s crib, its corners and bars draped with spider webs. The accompanying mattress, once bright with printed lambs and rabbits, is now stained with mildew. Some boxes contain university textbooks, old and outdated. Others hold household items, some old, some just no longer used. Findley sniffs the floor where some mouse droppings lie, then follows the scent, only to lose it under a pile of discards that lean against one wall.

  “Come on, Fin, let’s go,” Megan says. Then she and the dog stroll around the side of the house towards the backyard.

  To the people on the street, Megan is an oddity. Eccentric, some call her. Others say she is a free spirit. What they do agree on is that her yard is a mess. For the amount of time that she spends outside, it never appears to them that anything improves. The front lawn, mostly dandelions and wild strawberries, always has notable dead spots that they believe must be cinch bugs but are actually where Findley does his business, burning the weeds with his urine. The gardens are overgrown, with no divisions between plants that they can see. Thyme invades the phlox. Snow-in-summer intrudes on the coreopsis. Black-eyed Susans, allowed to go to seed, sprout up in the middle of everything. On this April day, the chaos is less apparent because these things have yet to wake up. The neighbours, too busy with their own yards and social niceties, have not yet cast a disapproving eye in Megan’s direction. This will happen later, in summer, provoking whispers and nods and discussions on patios or at community events. “Thank heavens the house is brick and the windows are vinyl. Imagine what the place would look like if they weren’t.”

  The backyard slopes gracefully to the lake. It is more like a large pond, rather shallow and weedy, not really big enough for boats or summer recreation, a perfect habitat for birds and bugs. Gardens stretch in both directions towards the property line from a walk that winds its way down to the water. The faces of early pansies stare upwards from between the stones in a defiant manner. Pick us out, we dare you. Others would have, but Megan likes the violet flowers and lets them be. She is not one who thinks of them as weeds or who cares that they have decided to live in the cracks of her garden path.

  She begins at the top of the hill, cleaning out the dead leaves from last fall, a job she prefers to do in the spring to avoid the chill of autumn once they fall from the trees. Findley sits on the walk, watching her while she gathers them, some dry and crackling, others wet and full of the movement of wood bugs. Each time she fills the bucket, Megan walks back up the slope and dumps it in a pile at the side of the yard where they will remain, eventually becoming overgrown with tall grass and bugleweed.

  “Fin, where’s your ball?” she says, and the dog begins searching the yard for the toy, wavering back and forth with his nose to the ground and his tail in the air.

  Megan pulls out the stems of last year’s day lilies. They are hollow and always make her think of Huck Finn hiding in the river and using a reed to breathe while under water. At least she thinks it was Huck Finn. Perhaps it was from an old movie she saw once, perhaps both. She puts all the stems into the bucket, then moves on to the hostas to do the same, slowly working her way from side to side, stopping to check individual perennials for new growth. One of her coral bells has died. Its brittle stock and root lifts out of the ground with a handful of leaves that Megan scoops up. A beetle scurries over the clumps of loose dirt and an earthworm pulls its body back into a dark tunnel.

  Jamie died when he was three. If Megan allowed it, she could still see his lifeless body and his crushed tricycle under the rear wheel of the pickup. The black Ford pickup with a black cap that made her remember it like a hearse. Blue trike. Yellow hair. Red blood. Both she and John were standing at the fence talking to Evelyn. Jamie was riding his trike up and down the driveway. “Look, Mommy, look, Daddy, look at me,” he called over and over and they would look and clap and tell him how great he was doing. It was one of those rare April days. Rob jumped into his truck and shouted that he was going to get fertilizer for the lawn. Somewhere in a single breath of time, unseen by four sets of eyes, Jamie turned his tricycle onto the sidewalk and raced towards the Montgomerys’ driveway. “Look, Mommy, look, Daddy, look at me.”

  Jamie!

  Megan inhales deeply through her nose and exhales through the ci
rcle of her mouth, as if in labour. Findley nudges her with his muzzle, holding the ball between his teeth. “Hey, Fin, you found it,” she says, rubbing the dog’s ears. For a moment, she holds him around the neck and rests her cheek against his soft head, then stands up and grabs the bucket by the handle. “Let’s go to the lake.”

  Mayflies are hatching from the water. Their vertical wings carry them upwards and away from their nymph relatives. Such unusual creatures, with upright appendages and dual wire tails. They look like something from a cover of the fantasy novels John used to read, something that would have a warrior sitting on its back holding reins with one hand and waving a sword with the other. Jamie would have loved the mayflies. By the age of three, he had been immersed in a world of knights and castles. He would be sixteen now, spending too much time on the computer or playing video games and talking on the phone with his friends. Probably a reader like both parents, and possibly involved in sports or music.

  At first, there had been the drug-induced numbness that carried them through the funeral and the weeks after, the sedatives making their mouths so dry that every swallow felt like they were forcing the entire world down. It would only go so far, then stick like a goitre in their throats. Afterwards, the distribution of blame, no names spoken, no eye contact made, only what-if scenarios that crowded their thoughts. When the Sold sign went up on Evelyn and Rob’s front lawn, they were both relieved. There was the night that Megan sat with her back leaning against the locked bathroom door. The remaining sedatives dumped from the amber vial between her spread legs while she counted them. Seventeen. John pounding on the other side, the vibrations of his force rocking her shoulder blades, “Megan, are you okay?” then apologizing when the toilet flushed as she watched the pills circle the bowl. Grabbing the towels, she opened the door and walked past him to take them to the laundry room.